Oct. 24: New York Times Best-Selling Author Ijeoma Oluo to Deliver Carol Ortman Perkins Lecture at Minnesota State Mankato

Tuesday, October 24, 2023
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Centennial Student Union Ballroom

Mankato Free Press coverage

Mankato, Minn. – Best-selling author Ijeoma Oluo, described on her website as a “writer, speaker and internet yeller,” will present Minnesota State University, Mankato’s 15^th Carol Ortman Perkins Lecture at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 24 in the University’s Centennial Student Union Ballroom.

Oluo’s presentation is open to the public and will be on the intersections of race and gender in the context of higher education. Oluo will sign books after the event.

Free tickets are available in the Minnesota State Mankato Women’s Center, located in Centennial Student Union, Room 218, or at the Coffee Hag (329 N. Riverfront Drive, Mankato). More information on tickets is available by calling 507-389-6146.

For questions about media coverage and interviews, please contact Liz Steinborn-Gourley, director of the Women’s Center, by phone at 507-389-6147 or by email at elizabeth.steinborn-gourley@mnsu.edu.

An event preview provided by the Minnesota State Mankato Women’s Center includes the following information about Oluo from her website: “Ijeoma Oluo (ee-joh-mah oh-loo-oh) is the author of the #1 New York Times best seller, “So You Want to Talk About Race,” and most recently, “Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America.” Her work on race has been featured in The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post, among many other publications. She was named to the 2021 TIME 100 Next list and has twice been named to the Root 100. She received the 2018 Feminist Humanist Award and the 2020 Harvard Humanist of the Year Award from the American Humanist Association. She lives in Seattle, Washington.”

About the Carol Ortman Perkins Lectureship

The Department of History and Gender Studies launched the Perkins Lectureship campaign in 2003 to commemorate Perkins’ retirement as chair of the department for over a decade. Perkins’ commitment to and enthusiasm for gender & women’s studies helped make the department an exciting and dynamic place to study systems of oppression both locally and internationally.

The aim of this lectureship is to invite a distinguished feminist scholar/activist to campus each year to visit Minnesota State Mankato and deliver an address to the community. Lecturers are selected based on their contributions to feminist scholarship.

The lectureship fulfills the mission of the University’s Women’s Center and the Department of History and Gender Studies to promote feminist scholarship and activism and to encourage the exchange of ideas.

Previous lecturers have included Lilly Ledbetter, Gloria Steinem, Wilma Mankiller, Dorothy Allison, Jessica Valenti, Susan Faludi, Jewel Woods, Laverne Cox and others.

Minnesota State Mankato’s Department of History and Gender Studies is part of the University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Minnesota State Mankato, a comprehensive university with 14,635 students, is part of the Minnesota State system, which includes 26 colleges and seven universities.